Freshman MIT Students Automate Dorm Room

Inessa writes "Two freshman MIT students have automated their dorm room, complete with a big red party button which generates an instant party. Their custom-engineered system is called MIDAS, the Multi-Function In Dorm Automation System. According to the MIT News office, "Gone are the light switches and glaring fluorescent lights of a typical dorm room. Zack Anderson and RJ Ryan's room has several lighting schemes, remote web access, voice activation, a security system, electric blinds and more ... With the touch of one red button, their dorm room becomes a rave. The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat.""

Comments

MIT's drug abuse problem

[SuperBanana]

This inculcation of curiosity and resourcefulness is what makes studying at MIT truly unique. No wonder it is one of the premier educational institutions in the world.

You don't live in Boston, so you don't hear about what MIT is often in the news for: students getting really hammered, and occasionally falling out of dorm room windows and getting killed.

MIT has a huge problem with drug abuse- and that includes alcohol. Having lived in the same city as MIT for over a decade, I'm not really sure why everyone thinks MIT is the greatest technical school in the world...it's not even close. I've spoken to a lot of managers at high-tech companies that won't hire fresh MIT grads because a)they don't know anything actually useful and b)they think they know everything, so when they're doing something wrong, they don't listen to coworkers, team leaders, and managers.

My favorite example is the manager who told me about the MIT programmer he hired that wouldn't use constants...he's plug in the same number 50 times in his algorithm, instead of defining a properly named constant...and his variable names were hilariously bad. Basically, it was clear he never learned proper programming techniques. Despite the manager's insistence that he define constants, etc (ie follow company coding standards), the guy kept doing it his way.

So he was fired. Ever wonder why so many MIT grads work for other MIT grads? It's because they're un-employable by anyone else.

Re:MIT's drug abuse problem

[alfs boner]

lol @ at the state college loser with penis-envy. Maybe if you did a little better in high school, you wouldn't be reduced to making up stories about your social and intellectual betters.

:)